Weigh In! Is it Time for a Re-design?

I’m taking a few minutes out of our month of Halloween to reach out directly to readers. I will have been the proud owner and writer of For Whom The Gear Turns for three years as of Oct. 31, 2016. Running stuff on my own is both a boon and a bane sometimes, especially when it comes to making changes.

Personally, I love the look of this site. I think the stained concrete of the background fits in nicely with the “punk” and urban side of things, and proves you don’t need gears for a site to be Steampunk. Plus, white writing on a dark background is easier for people with visual disabilities to read. On the other hand, dark backgrounds are widely considered “unprofessional” among designers (and readers), and people with normal vision sometimes report that it is harder to read, so I’ve been thinking giving the site a facelift.

More than anything, I want to be a professional writer. I don’t do this blog for pay, but I do plan to use it to help support my paid writing career and act as a way to connect to other fans of the Steampunk genre. At the same time, I don’t want to do anything to lose the awesome folks who already follow me. For instance, making sweeping changes to website would mean closing For Whom The Gear Turns for a few weeks while I get everything perfect.

So this is where you come in. Please weigh in on the poll below and help me decide if it is time for a new look. Feel free to leave comments as well!

2 responses

I think your site looks great, it is odd to have the word gears in the title but no gear on the background, but it’s your site.
I think that’s what it comes down to, if you like it, people visit, keep it.

My thinking was that so much of the time I see people *mocking* steampunk it is with an over reliance on goggles and gears. I also wanted to avoid any question of the old “glue some gears on it and call it Steampunk” adage by choosing a theme that let images collect and my words do the actual talking 🙂